Mac versus PC

[Jack Dahlgren]

I think that you are incorrect about vapor chamber cooling. Nvidia adopted it rather than invented it. GM, RCA and NASA all contributed to the development of the technology, long before the PC existed.

Likewise, you mentioned CUDA and other GPU advancements. These are not just for PC's.

[Frank Petronio]

Reagrading the speed of computers, I started using Macs when they were the only game in town for Photo Shop. It would take sometimes a half hour for some PS function to complete on a 25 meg file. Now I have almost no wait times on files that bulk up as much as 5 gigs. Just how much more speed does one need when almost all actions are instantaneous? Granted there might be some cine applications for professionals in the film business, but that's a tiny number of users.

The arguments about speed are really pointless. It's like arguing that a car that does 0-60 in 2.4 seconds is much faster than a car that does it in 3 seconds flat and therefore the 3 second car is not a great car. Who cares? Who is really going to need or benefit by such a small and non practical increase in speed?

;-) plus a loaded IIci cost about $5K and I remember 8mb RAM sticks were $800 or so... I could still watch a TV sitcom while waiting for a filter to run.

Now I use a $1500 system based on a Mac Mini Server that can open an entire shoot's worth of images.

[wmsey]

"I just don't get it. Is it that the buyers of apple computers just don't know better or that they don't want to do any research into quality PC options?"

Yes, I am an idiot and I don't know better and yes I don't get it. I am also too lazy to know a thing about Window's and machines that run it. If I hadn't got 4 years of non-stop service out of my MacPro I'd feel completely foolish and I thank you for pointing that out. I'm honestly sorry that I bought it with it's enterprise level hardware and damn I wish it had a plastic case.

And OS X is... wait OS X is wonderful.

You are obviously a Troll. Good luck with that.

[Brian K]

;-) plus a loaded IIci cost about $5K and I remember 8mb RAM sticks were $800 or so... I could still watch a TV sitcom while waiting for a filter to run.

Now I use a $1500 system based on a Mac Mini Server that can open an entire shoot's worth of images.

Frank I had 24 MB of RAM, serious money back then, and a 600MB "turbo" PLI HD that cost $3000. And now my phone has a faster processor and vastly more memory. Quite a bit of advancement. I also had a desk top scanner, crap by todays standards of even the most consumer oriented scanners, and it too cost $3000.

[8x10 user]

It was late and I made a few errors this one... It looks like the fasest mac uses a 23 multiplier to get a 3.06 ghz speed. Also the fastest memory multiplier on the SR-2 is 10, when you fill all the DIMM slots (6 per cpu) it lowers the memory clock to 8 then you can change it to 10 in the BIO's. With adjustments to the baseclock you can reach 1900-1950 MHZ on your memory with and 12 banks rather then 8 that is a lot of bandwidth.

Well the speed of your CPU in mhz is a factor of your base clock or system bus speed times the clock multiplier in the CPU. The starting bus speed on the mac pro and x56XX xeon PC's is 133. The fastest CPU on the mac pro (x5670) has a multiplier of of 22 (133 x 22 =2.93ghz). The memory on the mac pro is spec'd at 1333MHZ so the memory multiplier would be 10. If one were to make a similar system on a EVGA SR-2 motherboard they would have the freedom to use a x12 memory multiplier and to change the base clock speed which will increase CPU and Memory speeds. Most high end single CPU motherborads would support higher memory multipliers then 12x.

With good cooling a baseclock of 190 is fairly easy is to obtain on the SR-2 without generating high temperatures or using excessive voltage. The SR-2 has more DIMM slots as well so total memory bandwidth can be set to more then twice that of the current mac pro.

[8x10 user]

I thought Nvidia adapted it from video care manufacturer called sapphire who would upgrade the cooling on some of their versions of nvidia and AMD chips. Anyway I don't really know the technology was probably around before sapphire. CUDA is not just for PC but I think people started using it on Linux and Windows first.

I think that you are incorrect about vapor chamber cooling. Nvidia adopted it rather than invented it. GM, RCA and NASA all contributed to the development of the technology, long before the PC existed.

Likewise, you mentioned CUDA and other GPU advancements. These are not just for PC's.

[8x10 user]

Really you make a really good point not everyone can justify the fastest mac or the fastest PC. It really dependents on what your doing. If your are stitching gigapixel images all day professionally then a fast system would be a good investment because of the time you would save. If you photoshop every one in a while and that's the most complicated thing you do then maybe its not worth it. Photoshop on a super fast system is fun thou... You can do quick selections on giant images without it taking forever or use more complicated filters without worry about the wait.

For a lot of people here a $800 PC or a $1800 mac would be fast enough.

Reagrading the speed of computers, I started using Macs when they were the only game in town for Photo Shop. It would take sometimes a half hour for some PS function to complete on a 25 meg file. Now I have almost no wait times on files that bulk up as much as 5 gigs. Just how much more speed does one need when almost all actions are instantaneous? Granted there might be some cine applications for professionals in the film business, but that's a tiny number of users.

The arguments about speed are really pointless. It's like arguing that a car that does 0-60 in 2.4 seconds is much faster than a car that does it in 3 seconds flat and therefore the 3 second car is not a great car. Who cares? Who is really going to need or benefit by such a small and non practical increase in speed?

[8x10 user]

I just don't think a lot of people realize you can get PC with enterprise level hardware for less. Metal cases are available for PC's as well. Windows 7 is really nice... My friend and I have both been using it for a year with no crashes. I find the OS intuitive and easy to use, I love the little things like when I grab a window and move it to the top of my other window it will automatically maximize the window in the other screen. Its fast and stable and TRIM support in the OS means my SSD won't degrade as fast as it would on a MAC.

"I just don't get it. Is it that the buyers of apple computers just don't know better or that they don't want to do any research into quality PC options?"

Yes, I am an idiot and I don't know better and yes I don't get it. I am also too lazy to know a thing about Window's and machines that run it. If I hadn't got 4 years of non-stop service out of my MacPro I'd feel completely foolish and I thank you for pointing that out. I'm honestly sorry that I bought it with it's enterprise level hardware and damn I wish it had a plastic case.

And OS X is... wait OS X is wonderful.

You are obviously a Troll. Good luck with that.

[8x10 user]

Both Windows and Apple buy or steal a good portion of their innovations from independent outfits and from other operating systems like Linux. OSX is actually built on unix. I think more credit should be given to the creators of Unix and C++, they both died fairly recently but its not getting a lot of press. C++ changed the world of computing and without Unix there would be no mac OSX.

By the way frank, the first CD drive was made for an IBM computer but that's all 80's and 90's stuff anyway.

[8x10 user]

A lot of the people here probably don't know how to build their own computer and perhaps think its much harder then it is. Which is understandable... It's not like this a computer forum. But it is actually pretty easy and I am sure everyone here could do it.

I do think that building your own PC is the best option, and that more should consider it. Honestly its not that hard, just go to BenchmarkReviews.com and Tomshardware.com find out what people recommend in your price range and buy the parts. To start with you only need a CPU, a motherboard, a case, a cpu cooler, a harddrive, a video card, a powersupply, and Ram. It takes only a few minutes to put one together for the most part all you gotta do is put the parts in their slots... Super easy.

A lot of people might have had bad experiences with pre built PC's, most of the big manufactures aren't very good IMO. Alot of times they use good parts in some areas but less good parts in other areas. You don't want to go to best buy, dell, or HP. Building your own PC is worth the time, but there are smaller places who do offer higher quality custom PC's. I don't know too much about what the best names are. I know puget and falcon PC are supposed to be pretty good. Alienware use to be OK but not since HP purchased them.

It is fine if you want a mac because its you like the user interface more, or because you don't have the time or the want to look at the alternatives. But there is a premium.. You can build a computer for much less then a mac that is equally fast. Also the fastest options are PC based.

In terms of speed adobe programs are really good at harnessing the power of a MAC or PC. The system specs have more to do with what the performance will be. The highest specs are from custom windows computers. There are some programs that will run better on a MAC or a PC based on how well it's written for the particular OS. There are also MAC only and PC only programs.

I do like building computers and I think that the savings would outweigh the time investment for most people here. In a day you can build a computer for $5000 that would be close to maybe an $8000 mac.